Cash payments to persuade drivers who live in pollution hotspots to give up their diesel cars may be part of a new scrappage scheme under the government’s air quality plans, due to be published in the next week.Downing Street has been mulling the idea after being ...

.... “The scope for optimisation also depends on numerous external factors such as the outcome of the Brexit negotiations and the implications that follow,” it said. In a separate development, Frank Field, the Labour MP and chairman of the House of Commons work and pensions committee, has written to the pensions regulator asking for assurances that the new pension arrangements for Tata Steel workers are adequately funded in the long term, and that members can be certain they will receive the reduced benefits that they are now being promised. ...

....The debt charity StepChange said the percentage of its clients falling behind on payments went over 40% in the first half of 2017, while the average debt of the people it helps has also risen, from £14,251 in 2016 to £14,367 in the first half of the year. Students who started studying in England in 2012 are expected to leave university with debts of almost £40,000, according to a House of Commons Library paper. ...